- How do you know when you have made it in English?
That's what this video is all about.
But first, roll the intro.
(upbeat, energetic music)
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening,
depending where you happen to be
in the big wide world right now.
I'm Julian Northbrook, and this is Doing English.
I'll never forget the day that I realised I had done it.
The day I realised, I have mastered the Japanese language.
It was all the way back in the summer of 2012.
I'd just stepped off of a beautifully air conditioned coach
that I'd been on for the last five hours,
out into the sweltering heat
of the Japanese summer countryside.
I was at a train station out in the middle of nowhere
that doubled up as a coach park,
but was essentially just a big car park.
A friend of mine was coming to pick me up by car
to take me to a school where we
would conduct one of my research experiments.
But by chance I'd gotten on an earlier coach
than I'd originally planned to,
and I'd arrived an entire hour early.
I had time to kill, but this wasn't exactly
like a Tokyo train station with its department stores
and cafes, bars and all of the other
entertaining things that you find to do.
No, I was in the middle of nowhere.
But I looked around, and over in the corner
of the car park, I could see a little tiny cafe.
Not really even a cafe, a coffee stand.
And not even actually a coffee stand,
it was actually a garden shed on a small platform
with a couple of plastic chairs around it,
and a little sign that read, iced coffee here, 150 yen.
Well it's not like I had anything else to do, I thought.
Might as well kill an hour by having a nice iced coffee.
Damn, it's hot enough anyway.
So I walked over to this little
wooden shed construction thing.
And I called out (speaks Japanese).
The door opened and a startled, half terrified looking
middle-aged Japanese lady stamped out.
Having lived in Japan for a long time now,
I am very, very much used to this,
but there are many people in Japan who seem
to have this weird complex when it comes to English.
And when confronted with an obvious westerner like myself
and not knowing whether that person
will speak Japanese or not, they feel
like they have to speak English, but panic sets in.
(speaking foreign language) I said in Japanese.
Please give me an iced coffee.
Instantly she looked relieved.
"Oh, you speak Japanese," she said.
Here I responded with the typical
appropriate Japanese response.
"Oh, just a little, but I'm not very good.
"You know, I'm still studying."
Technically speaking, to say that I was no good
at the language and that I still had to do a lot
of studying, technically wasn't true.
I'd passed the highest level
of the Japanese proficiency test,
the Nihongo Noryoku Shiken, the year before.
I'd been working as a freelance translator
in the evenings for several months,
and I was working full time in a Japanese company
which was pretty much all in Japanese.
Why I responded to her compliment in the way that I did
is the topic for another video.
But she got me my iced coffee
and we both sat down at one of the plastic tables.
For a moment, we were silent,
but she obviously didn't have
many people to talk to in the day.
All of a sudden the floodgates opened.
She began to talk, and talk, and talk.
She told me all about the area.
About the famous shrine nearby that had been built
in 600 BC that I had no idea about.
She told me that this was the home town
of Juri Takahashi, one of the members of AKB48
for those of you who are fans
of all things Japanese pop culture.
She talked, and talked, and talked.
She told me about all kinds of interesting things.
We talked about British culture,
and how it differ from Japanese culture.
We talked about this, we talked about that,
we talked about all manner of things.
And then all of a sudden, my phone began to ring.
"Hi, it's me, I'm here, where are you?" said my friend.
Have you ever been so engaged in a conversation,
so absorbed in talking to someone,
that it's like everything around you disappears?
The world slips away and although time continues to flow,
you become blissfully unaware of it
until what felt like a few seconds
transpires to have been more than an hour.
When I looked at my phone and saw the time,
I couldn't believe it, it had been more than an hour.
My friend was actually running a little bit late,
but it had felt like I'd only just sat down.
Saying my good-byes, I ran across the car park
to where my friend was waiting
in his beautifully air conditioned car.
"Sorry I'm a little bit late," my friend said.
"No worries," I replied.
"Actually, I got a slightly
"earlier coach and I've been here for a while.
"But don't worry, I had a coffee
"at that little coffee stand over there."
I told him that I'd been chatting to this lady
and that she told me all about the area.
"Oh," he said, "does she speak English, then?"
This was a friend with whom
I'd only ever spoken English, never Japanese.
So it was a perfectly logical question for him to ask.
But then I realised,
I actually didn't know.
What language had we been speaking?
Had we been speaking English, or Japanese?
Logically I knew that it had to have been Japanese.
But I couldn't remember.
I couldn't actually remember
what language we'd been speaking,
only what we had been speaking about.
I'd been so absorbed in the conversation
that the fact I'd been speaking
and understanding in a second language
had not occurred to me at all.
I had been completely unconscious
of the fact that I was speaking my second language.
Or to put it another way, I had completely forgotten
that Japanese wasn't my first language.
This, this is when you know you have made it.
When you become so absorbed in whatever it is
that you are doing, that you become totally unconscious
of English being your second language,
you forget that it isn't your first language.
This is when you know you have reached the level of mastery.
This is the kind of moment
that I want to help you, my friend, to have.
And that, is exactly what my book,
Master English FAST: An Uncommon Guide
to Speaking Extraordinary English will help you to do.
It will show you step by simple step
how to take your English as it is now,
this conscious thing that you are constantly thinking
about as you speak, and pull it up
to the level where you forget
that English isn't your first language.
Link in the description, or head over to
masterenglishfast.com.
Forgetting that English isn't your first language,
doesn't, of course, mean
that you are perfect in the language.
Reaching the level of mastery,
simply means you are a master of that language.
It does not mean that you have no more to learn.
On the contrary, there will never be an end
to the English learning process.
For myself, too, learning and speaking Japanese.
There will always be room for improvement.
But when you reach that level,
when you find that you can do everything
in your second language that you can do
in your first language to the same extent,
wow, it's a beautiful thing.
I hope that you found this story
and the important message that it contains useful.
If you did, give it a nice big old thumbs up.
And if you're completely new to this channel,
be sure to subscribe to get more videos
just like this one.
Everyday, 8am, JST, from me, Julian Northbrook.
Thank you, and good-bye.
(energetic music)
If you wanna know more about me,
your host Julian Northbrook,
my story as a struggling Japanese learner,
how I overcame my problems with the language,
and how you can do the same in English,
you're definitely gonna wanna check out my short film.
Forgetting that English isn't Your First Language.
Check it out.
Oh.